Sunday, 11 November 2018

Watching Mumsnet, Watching Britains Largest Family

I have a love hate relationship with Mumsnet. It’s always fascinating
to me as the epicentre of a particular kind of engaged, intensive form of
mothering with a particular focus on education.

On Mumsnet I have seen posters ask “Doesn’t everyone teach
their kids to read before they start school? Surely that just part of good
parenting.” I’ve seen long threads on
the subject of what exactly constitutes “social capital” and how they can be
sure to impart it. (Trips to the opera were mentioned.). I’ve seen debates on various
types of secondary schools conducted from the starting point that everyone’s child
would easily get into grammar school. No doubt because of the work already invested
in “talking and reading to them when they were little”

It’s a part of a particular kind of parenting which originates
in the middle class. The basic strategy being to have fewer children and to invest
more heavily in them in the hopes that they can become high earners and
replicate the privilege that allowed you to parent in that way in the first
place.

What’s interesting about this kind of parenting is not so
much its merits. It’s a fairly
reasonable adaptation to the circumstances of middle class life. What’s more interesting
is the extent to which its followers believe it to be a moral and social good
in and of itself, rather than a method of replicating and hording privilege to
the benefit of their own offspring.

It’s one of the many ways in which middle class people tend
to confuse their own interests with the general good. And since middle class
people are in positions of power and influence that gets translated into social
policy so that working class women have to be harassed to parent more like
middle class mothers.

I’m reminded of all this on this current Mumsnet thread
discussing the Radfords, “Britains Largest Family.”

The Radfords are essentially doing an extreme
version of the opposite strategy. Instead of having small number of children and invesiting in them heavily they have a very large number of children
and utilise their labour power for good of the family as a whole.

Traditionally, this might be on a farm. In
the Radfords case, its the family bakery, looking after younger siblings and
in the very modern profession of celebrity itself.

It’s worth having a look at the thread to see people who do intensive
parenting in a small family, completely failing to understand collective parenting
in a larger family.

“How do the kids do afterschool activities?” They ask. “When
does anyone listen to them read?” "What about parents evening?"

The implied answers being, of course “they don’t”, "never" and "I bet they don't bother to turn up." Cue much frothing
from a section of society that view these things as sacrosanct.

The theme finally reaches its peak when a poster suggests
that all 21 Radford kids will be a “burden to society” because without
intensive parental involvement in their education “they are unlikely to become
high earners.”

I love this particular comment because it makes so much of
the usually unspoken Mumsnet assumptions explicit. Human value is measured in
wealth. Poor people are a burden. People who fail to meet middle class standards
for educational involvement are a problem, not just for their own children, but
for society as a whole.

All this is far more interesting, to my mind, than the lives of the
Radfords themselves.